An ideological representation in shakespeare's Macbeth: critical stylistic analysis of soliloquies

Critical Stylistics is a new branch of linguistics that studies ideology in literary and political texts. It relies on criteria adopted from the stylistic analysis. Thus, this paper aims to apply Jeffries’ (2009) critical stylistics model to soliloquies in Macbeth written by Shakespeare. This study also aims at analyzing two soliloquies given by the character of Macbeth using only three of the textual-conceptual functions of Jeffries’ (2009) model. These functions are: Naming and Describing; Prioritizing; and Equating and Contrasting. These functions are adopted in this study because they reveal what the speaker is representing regarding his ideology. This study follows the qualitative and quantitative approaches of analysis; the qualitative analysis of the soliloquies is intended to show how the textual-conceptual functions are used, and the quantitative analysis shows the frequency of this use. This study concludes that Shakespearean soliloquies in Macbeth are loaded with ideology and this ideology is represented by the use of naming and describing words such as assassination, dagger, ambition to represent negative and dangerous ideology; furthermore, prioritizing some instances such as his murderer to contradict what is supposed to be the case.